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dogs were still leashed but were straining madly, pulling their handlers along so quickly that some horses broke from a trot to a canter to keep pace. It would have been easier to loose them, but the men had been promised boar, and the air was so clear that all kinds of scents were running. The dogs might just as easily have rushed off after a fox or a hare or a stag. Game was exceptionally plentiful, because, owing to Simon's illness and Alinor's preoccupation, no one had hunted Alinor's forests for almost two years. Once in a while Alinor had ordered her huntsman to bring in a doe or a fawn or a wild piglet to tempt Simon's appetite, but aside from that, the beasts had developed unchecked.
They rode into the tongue of woods where Alinor's abductors had hidden and, almost at once, one of the dogs put down her head and began to bell. Alinor found her breath quickening. It had been so long, so long since she had ridden behind the hounds. The rache bitch was loosed, and then a few more. The huntsmen, having determined that the raches had picked up the correct scent, signaled that all the leashes be slipped. At once bedlam broke loose. Even the hounds began to bay, so strong was the scent. The horses sprang forward on the heels of the hounds, Alinor's spirited black mare along with the others.
"Have a care, Alinor," William shouted as he thundered by.
But Alinor was not in the mood for care, and she laid her whip to Velvet out of pure excitement, for the mare was eager enough without that stimulus. Now that the initial hysteria was over, the dogs were quieter; the raches belled their signal to the hunters, but the fighting hounds ran silent. It was dangerous riding. The horses shouldered and jostled one another into trees, and low branches whipped and tore at flesh and clothes. Alinor laughed with the thrill of danger as her headdress was torn from her head. Had the branch caught more firmly, she could have had her neck broken or been strangled

 
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